Bomb Apparently Intended for Hezbollah’s Leader Is Defused

An Iranian-backed fundamentalist group linked to the holding of Western hostages said Saturday that it had thwarted an attempt to assassinate its mentor.

A car rigged with 200 pounds of TNT was parked off the road that Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah takes daily from his house to Beir el Abed mosque in Beirut’s southern slums, said a statement by Hezbollah, or Party of God.

Police said the bomb-laden car was set to be detonated by remote control. They said they could not confirm that it was intended to kill Fadlallah.

The bomb was safely defused in the car, which was parked in front of a bank about 100 yards from the mosque and about a mile from the Shiite Muslim cleric’s house, the statement said.

Fadlallah, 54, is the spiritual guide of Hezbollah, believed to be the umbrella group of Shiite extremist factions holding most of the 18 Western hostages, including eight Americans, in Lebanon.

There was no indication of who might have engineered the bombing attempt.

It was reported shortly after a cease-fire halted 24 hours of street battles between Hezbollah and the mainstream Shiite Amal militia in which police said 13 people were killed and 22 wounded.

Assassinations by car bombs or bomb blasts have long been a byproduct of Lebanon’s 14-year-old civil war.

The latest was the remote-controlled bomb that killed President Rene Mouawad and 23 others in Muslim West Beirut on Nov. 22, just 17 days after his election. No one has claimed responsibility.

Mouawad was elected as part of an Arab League-sponsored pact aimed at ending the protracted civil war. His election was opposed by the country’s Christian leader and army commander, Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, because the pact does not provide a timetable for the removal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

The Syrians were first deployed here in 1976 under a peacekeeping mandate. Aoun said they violated the mandate by siding with the Muslims in the war.

Meanwhile, Syrian President Hafez Assad said in remarks published in Kuwait that he would offer Syrian military assistance if the new Lebanese president, Elias Hrawi, decides to use force against the defiant Aoun.